


The Case of Tim’s Flu

by Crowlows19



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Batfamily Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 01:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowlows19/pseuds/Crowlows19
Summary: The first time Bruce took care of a sick Tim Drake would come define their bond for years to come.





	The Case of Tim’s Flu

Tim had always reacted strangely to being sick. Whereas he was normally adverse to sleep schedules or sleep at all, when he was sick he would operate in this strange in between of sleepiness and wakefulness. Bruce knew that if he caught Tim falling asleep while typing he had likely either been awake for three days or he was feeling sick. Tim's willpower would always crumble under the feelings of a cold and even his incredible stubbornness couldn't prop his eyes open.

And because he didn't get enough sleep regularly, despite Alfred's best efforts, he was sick more often than Bruce would like. Unfortunately, the first time Bruce had ever seen Tim sick, had been by far the worst apart from the Clench. He'd known Tim for all of six weeks and had barely begun his training, when one day Tim didn't show up. That concerned him enough considering the kid's enthusiasm and punctuality, but when Tim missed their scheduled time altogether he was out right worried. 

"Did he call you?" Bruce asked Alfred as he worked on a couple of outstanding casefiles. He was contemplating delaying patrol to find the wayward Tim Drake. "Did his parents come back?"

"No, Master Bruce, he has not called," Alfred replied and Bruce could tell he was equally as worried. Bruce stood up, abandoning his keyboard. 

"I'll go find him," he said, and went back upstairs, preferring to go the civilian route. There was a light drizzle outside and Bruce pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt as he walked through the woods connecting his property to the house next door. It took him about fifteen minutes to reach the house and he opened the front door without even bothering to knock. 

He really had no way to explain why he was letting himself in if someone was there, but he was half hoping there would be someone to ask what the hell he thought he was doing. However, as he had suspected, no one stopped him as he made his way upstairs to where he knew Tim's room was. He found the boy's door ajar and he knocked lightly. 

"Yeah?" Tim replied, sounding perfectly feeble and miserable. Bruce went in and found Tim still in bed, cocooned in his duvet, his hair sweaty and stringy, and his eyes glassy. There were two empty bottles of cold medicine on the night stand along with tissues, a can of ginger ale, and Tim's cell phone, the battery dead. 

Bruce crossed the room and stood over the boy.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Jerry gave me the flu," Tim replied, and he sounded completely miserable. Bruce didn't ask who Jerry was, assuming that it was someone from Gotham Academy. 

"Where are your parents?" Bruce asked. He'd been asking that question a lot over the last six weeks. Bruce had never had a Robin with parents who were both alive and still in retention of full custody. He had never been put in a position where he had to take into account another parent, no matter how absent, but with Tim he always felt like he had to ask if the boy's parents were around to do for him what Bruce would instinctually do. It was as if he was asking Tim's permission to parent him. 

"I don't know," Tim replied. "I got an email yesterday, I think. They're, they're,…somewhere. I don't remember because my brain hurts." Bruce leaned down and put the back of his hand on Tim's forehead, feeling the heat almost immediately. 

"Have you been vomiting?" he asked.

"Yeah," Tim mumbled. 

"When was the last time you ate or drank anything?"

"I don’t know," Tim said. "My body hurts."

"That's the fever," Bruce replied, moving around the room. He finally located Tim's backpack and emptied it of it's various school related debris. Tim's room was messy, he clearly wasn't told to clean it very often and Bruce knew he was naturally cluttered, so it took longer than he wanted for him to find what he needed. Eventually though, he found all the clothes, chargers, and electronic devices and had them packed. After adjusting the straps, he put the backpack on and went back to Tim. 

He scooped the kid up, duvet and all, and left the house. 

00000

Normally, Bruce didn't break out their emergency supplies for something like the flu. He would simply take the kids to Leslie and get treatment the traditional way. This was mostly to prevent overusing their supplies and risk detection from procuring too much, too often. He preferred to keep everything stocked for an actual emergency, one that involved poisoning or loss of blood. 

But he couldn’t take Tim to even Leslie. She would want to know where he'd come from; she would want to know why Bruce had him and, more importantly, she would want to know where his parents were. As a mandated reporter, Leslie was bound by law to report neglect. She had been willing to turn a blind eye to vigilante activity in the past but she wouldn't ignore Tim's situation. He knew her well enough to know that. 

He couldn't take Tim anywhere else for the same reason. The press would have a field day if he was caught bringing in a child that wasn't his to the hospital. So, he took out his own IV bags and medications, giving Tim two IV bags to battle his dehydration. 

After a few hours, Tim was resting in what was essentially his bedroom with Alfred watching over him and Bruce went on patrol. 

00000

He had been gone for about four hours when Alfred called him home with a stern, "Master Bruce, you are needed at the house, at once."

"Is everything okay?" he asked, expecting to hear that they needed to take to Tim to the hospital, scandal concerns be damned. 

"I require your assistance in convincing Timothy that he needs to stay in bed. He doesn't wish to believe me," Alfred continued, sounding so annoyed that Bruce had to force himself not to smirk. 

"On my way," he replied instead. 

When he got back and had changed into a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, he found Alfred heading down the stairs with some dirty dishes. He had an annoyed look on his face that only got more pronounced when he spotted Bruce.

"He is worse than you sometimes," Alfred said. 

When Bruce walked into Tim's room, he was sitting up in bed, typing away on his laptop, pale, sticky, and clearly still too sick to be working. 

"What are you doing?" Bruce asked, standing by the bed, hands in his pockets. 

"Working," Tim said, not looking up. 

"Working on what?" 

"I think I figured out the pattern on that serial killer case from the Bowery," Tim said. Bruce leaned over and looked at the screen. He would have liked to say that Tim's fever induced state had made the boy miss a step, then he would have had a valid excuse to make him stop but that wasn't the case. Tim was right. He had figured out the pattern. 

Bruce sighed and looked at the boy. 

He had known Tim for six weeks now and in that entire time, Tim's parents had not been in Gotham once. He had never even heard of Tim having so much as a phone call with them. There had been a postcard a few weeks ago with claims that they were island hopping but there had been nothing since that one piece of mail. Maybe if Tim had been left with a guardian, he wouldn't have been able to run around the country on his own, begging ex-sidekicks to come home. 

But he had and Bruce had been impressed. And he had said they'd give it a try. Now, he was at least partially responsible for what happened to this kid sitting in front of him, solving a serial murder while simultaneously shivering and sweating from fever. 

If this had been either of the other boys, that laptop would have been gone long before now. Tim wasn't his though, he was somebody else's. Bruce knew that what he did now would define the boundaries he would have with this Robin for the rest of his time with Bruce. 

Well, if Janet and Jack Drake weren't going to parent this boy, he could do his best. 

He reached out and took the laptop, closing it as he made his way across the room to set it on the desk. 

�"Bruce!" Tim protested. 

Bruce came back to the bed, put his hand on Tim's shoulder, and pushed him down until he was laying flat on his back. The kid was so weak from the flu that he nearly fell back on his own with barely any force. Pulling the covers over the boy, Bruce looked down into his face, mustering up as much sternness into his expression as he could. 

"Don't even think about getting out of this bed," he told him. Tim blinked at him and Bruce wondered if the boy had ever had someone say something like to him. "You need to rest. If I catch you working before Alfred gives you the all clear, you're grounded."

"I don't think you can ground me," Tim challenged. Bruce knew that Tim would bring up his lack of legal power over him at one point. He hadn't really expected it to be immediately. But Bruce had never met a challenge he hadn't conquered in one way or another. He doubted this scrawny twelve year old would be any different. 

"Really?" he scoffed, raising an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?"

Tim eyed him warily, clearly thinking about it. 

"No?" he finally said, sounding incredibly uncertain. 

"Good guess," Bruce replied. "Get some sleep."

He turned the lights out on his way out of the room and went downstairs to ask Alfred when Tim would need his next dose of medicine. And when he caught Tim on his phone a half hour later, he took all the electronics out of the room storing them in his closet, and then helped the boy with his medication. He stayed with the kid, sitting next to him on the bed, until he fell asleep. 

Tim's fever broke sometime that night and he was feeling well enough to eat at the table within the next couple of days. Bruce gave him his laptop back when it became obvious that Tim was going crazy from boredom, but would periodically shut off the WiFi as a cue for Tim to stop. 

By that next week, Tim was fine and back to normal training. But still Bruce didn't take him home to the empty house next door. He didn't like Tim being there on his own with nobody but a disinterested housekeeper who came by twice a week. 

So, Tim stayed at the Manor accumulating more and more stuff on his floor, annoying Alfred, and not getting enough sleep, though Bruce was positive that he was better off under their watchful eyes than he would have been at home where nobody was there to tell him 'no'. And during those few weeks when Tim's parents were home, Bruce still managed to hack his laptop, locking up his programs at four in the morning, and texting him a message to go to sleep. 

Tim had texted back a frowny faced emoji but his electronic activity went quiet, so Bruce was fairly certain he had followed orders. That was what their dynamic was from then on out. Bruce did what he normally did when he had a kid under his roof and when Tim was with his parents he still managed to find a way to parent Tim the way he thought he should be parented. 

And if he felt proud of the boy when he met Jack Drake at a Garden party for the first time and listened to him talk about Tim's good standing at Gotham Academy, that was his business. Though there would be many times through the years when all he really wanted to do was punch Jack Drake in the face and then tell him about all the things he had done to make someone like Tim parentable for someone like Jack. 

He never did though. It had never felt right but Tim had known and, really, that was all that mattered.


End file.
